A millennial couple moved from Arizona to China to teach at an international school. The cost of living is much cheaper, though the language barrier is challenging.
Scott Vleeschouwer moved from Arizona to China to work at an international school. Scott Vleeschouwer
- Scott and Marissa Vleeschouwer relocated from Arizona to China to work at an international school.
- The couple found China offered a lower cost of living and diverse travel opportunities.
- Despite cultural differences and language barriers, the Vleeschouwers enjoy their life in China.
Scott Vleeschouwer, 34, and his wife weren’t quite ready to start a family and re-budget their lives for having kids. They instead set their eyes on international travel.
His wife, a teacher, had been to China before and realized she could get a visa to teach at an international school there and bring Scott along. She got a job in a suburb of Shenzhen, China’s third-most populous city. The school that hired her also hired Scott, and the two put their lives in the US on hold and relocated to China.
Vleeschouwer said it’s taken some time to get used to the language and culture barriers, though they’ve enjoyed the lower cost of living, the natural landscape, and the relative quiet.
“When we looked through all the other places to be a teacher overseas, somewhere like China just beat everywhere else,” Vleeschouwer said.
Moving to China
Vleeschouwer was born and raised in Maryland. He got a business degree and designed layouts for retail stores. For work, he moved to Roanoke, Virginia; San Antonio; and Phoenix in 2019, where he met his wife.
After eight years in retail design, he switched to real estate as an agent and then worked as a mortgage broker for a year. He also held a job building vans, from campers to mobile doctor vans to fire and SWAT trucks. He lived on a sailboat in Mexico between visits to the US just prior to moving abroad.
The couple knew they wanted to go on a “wild adventure” before they had kids, though they also wanted to work during their trip to supplement the costs. After some research, they determined they could live comfortably in China and find employment despite the language barrier, as neither speaks fluent Mandarin or Cantonese. Despite some opposition from his family and friends, they predicted their experiences would be better than what many anticipated for them.
His wife got a job as a teacher at an international school, and the two moved to China on her visa. Although he had never taught, Vleeschouwer also secured a position at the school. They moved eight months ago to Dapeng, a suburb of Shenzhen by the beach.
The job allows both of them to take more time off than corporate positions due to various breaks, festivals, and holidays. They get two weeks off for spring break and Christmas, in addition to summer vacation, which has allowed them to visit Beijing and Shanghai. They have also traveled to India, Hong Kong, and the Philippines and booked trips to Indonesia and Kenya.
“We have access to a lot of places down in Southeast Asia that are pretty quick, short, affordable flights,” Vleeschouwer said. “I didn’t realize that we would have this many cool places to travel to so close.”
Cost of living in China compared to the US
His wife’s base salary in China is more than she made in the US, and the school pays for their healthcare and housing. Their flight to China was also paid for, and the school provided them with free lunches.
Before moving to China, the couple paid $1,900 a month in rent in Arizona. They still own and maintain two rental homes in the US. He said their internet bill was $130 a month, their cellphone bill was $70, and their electricity bill was $100. He said they spend about $500 to $600 a month on groceries, and their car insurance costs $100 monthly, in addition to $130 a month in gas.
In China, bicycles and e-scooters are the most common form of transportation, which saves them over $1,000 a year. They estimate the cost of a decent e-scooter to be $300. They occasionally take DiDi — the Chinese equivalent of Uber — which is only $1 to $2 to their workplace or $30 round-trip to the city’s downtown, about an hour away.
If they paid rent on their three-bedroom apartment, it would amount to about $800 a month.
Their phone bill is $27 monthly for three lines and 45 gigabytes of data. Their three-month water bill was just $9. They spend about $30 a week on groceries, frequently purchasing fresh fruit, fish, and rice. He said they shop at an expat grocery store that’s fairly Westernized.
Adjusting to cultural differences
Vleeschouwer said it’s taken him some time to adjust to cultural norms in China as he tries to improve his language skills.
While he’s trying to pick up on phrases and expressions to get around easily, he often relies on technology that automatically translates signs and labels. He also uses translation apps for communicating with people who don’t speak English, which is very common in his more rural area.
“The languages are very difficult to learn as an outsider,” he said. “You can teach yourself a word, and you say it again, and they don’t understand you.”
He’s able to access many apps on his VPN that are otherwise blocked by the government, which has allowed him to stay in better contact with friends and family in the US. Still, he misses having full access to the internet that he had in the US.
He’s slowly adjusted to restaurants not offering cold water and dining being community-style. He doesn’t drink tap water, as boiling it before drinking is recommended. He also knows to take off his shoes before entering someone else’s home.
Though he can get most of what he needs in his area, he misses the brands he’s come to love in the US. Getting products like medicine or vitamins or hair products takes some time to select due to the language barrier, as most brands are China-specific. He said in Shenzhen proper, there are a lot more Western stores, as well as a larger expat community.
He has felt very welcomed by those at his school and many in his community, though he said locals are sometimes confused about why he and his wife live so far outside of the city. They’ve made some good friends in China, many of whom are from abroad.
“We stick out like a sore thumb, and everyone stares at us,” Vleeschouwer said. “We will literally eat dinner and kids will come up and put chairs next to us and just watch us eat dinner. We held someone’s baby once; they just handed us their baby because they wanted a picture of their baby with a white person.”
Sometimes he enjoys doing the more touristy things like hiking the Great Wall of China or visiting Shanghai, parts of which reminded him of the US. He said the scale of cities and the “unfathomable high rises” in China also shocked him. Not having easy access to a car, though, is sometimes tough.
“We just are kind of locked where we are compared to what we’re used to,” Vleeschouwer said. “It’s a lot like city life, except we just can’t go anywhere.”
They plan to stay in China for two years per his wife’s contract, then they’re not sure where to go next. They may stay in China, which he said is a “really good place to have children,” given six months of paid maternity leave in his city. Still, they’ve considered going back to living on a sailboat in Mexico or building a homestead in Arizona.
Have you recently moved to a new country or state? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].
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